Categories
Mullanphy Emigrant Home North St. Louis Old North

ONSL Restoration Group Now Owns the Mullanphy Emigrant Home

The Old North St. Louis Restoration Group has closed on its purchase of the Mullanphy Emigrant Home. Now, the hard work begins.

Here is a letter from the Restoration Group’s Executive Director, Sean Thomas:

Dear Friend of Old North St. Louis:

Today the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group has taken a huge leap of faith. As of this morning, we are the proud – and very nervous – owners of the Mullanphy Emigrant Home building at 1609 N. 14th Street, just a few blocks north of Downtown St. Louis. Although we’re a community-based not-for-profit organization with an extremely tight budget, our Board decided to take this action because nobody else seemed willing or able to save the buiding from demolition or collapse. But we did so with the support and encouragement of many who recognize the building’s historic and architectural significance. Now we’re at a point where we need more than words of encouragement – we need your financial support to preserve the building.

On April 2 of this year, severe wind gusts hit the Italianate brick structure that was built in 1867 to house the Mullanphy Emigrant Home. These winds knocked out much of the south wall and led to an order from the City of St. Louis Building Division to demolish the building. Because of determined efforts by Old North St. Louis
Restoration Group, aided by many friends inside and outside of city government and a structural engineer’s report indicating that the building was not in imminent danger of collapse, the City rescinded the demolition order. Thankfully, the building has survived over the past seven months without additional damage. If the building is going to survive through the winter, though, we will need to take immediate measures to shore up the south end of the building and re-build the wall. Because the total bill for acquisition, insurance, and stabilization work will equal at least $150,000, more than half of the amount we have to raise every year for our basic organizational operations, we need financial support well beyond our usual sources of revenue. To help us reach this goal, we’re asking all who care about Old North St. Louis to make a contribution of whatever amount they can afford.

The Old North St. Louis Restoration Group is dedicated to re-building the neighborhood in a way that incorporates the community’s rich history and respects the beauty and architectural significance of the built environment – and the skill and craftsmanship of past generations that created it. We invite you to help us with a contribution to the preservation of the Mullanphy Emigrant Home. Please send a tax-deductible contribution to us as soon as you can, using the enclosed form. And if you know of anyone else who cares about preserving our city’s unique architectural heritage, please encourage them to contribute as well.

Thank you!

Sean Thomas
Executive Director

(By the way, Preservation covered the effort to restore the Mullanphy in a recent article.)

Categories
Architects Downtown

The Presence of Taylor and Enders

by Michael R. Allen

Stand at the corner of Eleventh and Washington streets in downtown St. Louis, and face north. On your right, across a parking lot, is the Catlin-Morton Building, built in 1901. Ahead, across another parking lot, is the Hadley-Dean Building, built in 1903. To your right, at the northeast corner, is the Bee Hat Company Building, built in 1899. On your immediate right is the robust Merchandise Mart Building (originally the Liggett and Myers Building), built in 1888-9.

As you scan these buildings, you will notice similarities: heights around seven stories tall, deft articulation of the masonry walls of the buildings, repeated arches, Classical Revival ornament balanced with modern forms. The bearing-wall Merchandise Mart has to be the finest Romanesque Revival building downtown, and the Hadley-Dean’s austerity anticipates the arrival of modernism in St. Louis.

However, these buildings share something more fundamental: the same architect, or perhaps architects. These buildings were designed by the prolific Isaac Taylor and his chief draftsman, Oscar Enders.

In a downtown marked by demolition, it seems rather fortuitous to the legacy of Taylor and Enders that their buildings remain such a strong presence. On the 1000 block of Washington, the Merchandise Mart occupied the entire southern side of the block while the north side, including the later Dorsa Building, is book-ended by Taylor and Enders’ designs of the Bee Hat Company Building and the Sullivan (alter Curlee) Building at Tenth and Washington, built in 1899.

Of course, other Taylor and Enders works have not been so blessed; the Columbia Buidling at Eighth and Locust was cut down to two stories in 1977, and the Silk Exchange Building at the southwest corner of Tucker and Washington burned and was demolished in 1995.

Categories
People Rehabbing Soulard

Neighborhood Baseball

by Michael R. Allen

Did you know that, once upon a time, there was a restoration baseball league in St. Louis? At least, according to historian Larry Giles, the league existed for one season in the early 1980’s. The league consisted of teams from rehab neighborhoods, although apparently one neighborhood was head and shoulders above the rest.

The championship game was a match between the Soulard “A” and “B” teams.

Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration Old North

Who Owns Parcel 03650000710?

by Michael R. Allen

I had no idea that the mailing address for the City of St. Louis was c/o Dodier Investors, 721 Olive Street, Suite 920. (See this parcel information page for the Assessor’s recording of the address for a section of the Illinois Terminal Railroad right-of-way on Tyler Street.)

Either the city is having such a tough revenue crunch that it had to move City Hall into the corner of a real estate office, or something else is going on.

UPDATE: The Assessor’s Office made a mistake in recording the transaction for the parcel. Here’s how it happened: On October 5, Ironhorse Resources transferred the parcel via quit-claim deed to Noble Development Company LLC, which sold the parcel on the same day to Dodier Investors LLC.

The parcel was carved from larger holdings of Ironhorse that were transferred on December 30, 2005, to the Metropolitan Park and Recreation District for the new trail that will utilize the old Illinois Terminal Railroad trestle. It seems hard to fathom that the future transfer to Noble Development was not in the works then.

The truth, then, is scarier than it seemed: the large parcel abutting a future trail is wholly owned by a private company with fictitious registration that is acquiring property at a rapid rate with little public scrutiny.

Categories
Fire North St. Louis Northside Regeneration

Givens Row Suffers Fire; Another Blairmont Blaze

by Michael R. Allen

Givens Row, the group of three limestone-faced, three-story row houses on the north side of Delmar just west of T.E. Huntley, suffered a small fire yesterday. The fire started at the eastern building in the group, 2903 Delmar Boulevard, which has been owned by Noble Development Company since September 13, 2006. The fire spread to the middle building, but was confined to the upper floor or each building. The cornices of the eastern two buildings were damaged. The western building, which is in use as apartments, suffered no damage at all.

The Italianate-style Givens Row was built in 1886 by businessman Jay Givens, who would later make a substantial donation to Washington University.

Noble Development Company is named for Harvey Noble, the real estate agent who is its registered agent. However, the company has deep ties to the Blairmont land scheme. Readers will recall that a tragic fire struck the Brecht Butcher Supply Company Buildings, owned by Blairmont Associates LC, last month.

Categories
JeffVanderLou North St. Louis Northside Regeneration Old North St. Louis Place

Strange Purchases on the Near Northside — Is There a Plan?

by Michael R. Allen

On October 13, the city recorded the quit-claim transfer of a sliver of property on Cass Avenue just east of the Greyhound station from Iron Horse Resources of O’Fallon, Illinois to Noble Development Company LLC. This parcel is the tunnel approach section of the right-of-way of the former Illinois Terminal Railroad’s electric interurban railroad.

The interurban ceased its runs in the 1950s, and this right-of-way has been vacant ever since. Currently, the section of the interurban line that ran on an elevated trestle to the McKinley Bridge is being converted into a trail. The “tunnel” section under Tucker Boulevard will be filled in by the city so that improvements can be made to Tucker.

Noble Development Company LLC is, of course, part of the “Blairmont” family of real estate companies. Supposedly a great mystery to city officials, these companies have a great knack for purchasing property that is strategic to various public works initiatives or urban planning projects. I find it very difficult to fathom that city leaders would let a parcel like the old Terminal Railroad right-of-way section slip through their fingers when it is needed for two large projects that are underway.

Is it possible that the transfer of the land to Noble Development Company was a result sought by someone in city government and that the mysterious company is holding the parcel and others in accord with a master plan for the near northside? I’m not sure, but it seems possible. Until city leaders address the strange property acquisition pattern of these companies, people are going to be led to such conclusions.

Hopefully, rehabbers and business owners on the near north side will stand their ground and avoid panic as rumors float. What a shame that as Old North St. Louis gains development traction the Blairmont scheme emerges without comment from the mayor or others who could instill confidence.

Categories
Demolition Forest Park Southeast

Gasometer Love

Someone (with the wry Flickr username of “flickr_screen_name”) has posted a photographic ode to the gasometer at Laclede Gas Company Pumping Station G on Chouteau Avenue in Forest Park Southeast. Here are the photos.

The gasometer, built in 1901 and rebuilt in the 1940’s, stands next to a delightful Renaissance Revival pumping station that will be renovated for condo use. The gasometer is not as fortunate, and is slated for demolition.

Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration Old North

Dodier Investors LLC, Welcome to My Neighborhood (Again)

by Michael R. Allen

There’s a new developer in Old North St. Louis. How do I know? Well, one of my neighbors sold three buildings located at 1420 and 1424 Hebert Street to this developer.

The name of the developer is Dodier Investors LLC.

Its address is 515 Olive Street, Suite 1608. Wait a minute — that’s the address of Eagle Realty Company, the agent for Blairmont Associates LC and the countless other fictitiously-registered companies, some which also listed a return mailing address at the offices of McEagle Development. These are the same people who hired an agent who tried to trick my legally-blind neighbor into selling a parcel she didn’t want to sell. I guess they finally found a new name and a new offer that she could not refuse, so the trick is now on the neighborhood.

Now that the only block in Old North that did not suffer demolition in the 20th century now has been infilitrated by the northside’s largest land scheme, everything is uneasy. Does the land scheme accomodate historic preservation and respect for an existing community? Or does it aim to superimpose upon the near northside a theoretical and lifeless vision of community based not on relationships between people but on a cyncial vision of development profit?

Answers to such questions are impossible to get when the people behind Dodier Investors LLC thwart communication and accountability.

Categories
Chicago Demolition Louis Sullivan

Demolition Started on Chicago’s Wirt Dexter Building

by Michael R. Allen

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that emergency demolition of the Wirt Dexter Building began today. The building, designed by Adler & Sullivan and built in 1887, burned in a huge fire on Tuesday.

Try to stanch the pain of tragedy by reading Carl Sandburg’s poem “Skyscraper.” The poem invokes the golden age of American tall buildings, started by rapid architectural innovation in which the Wirt Dexter Building was an integral part. The roots of the American skyscraper pass back through what is now a blackened wreck and what will next week be nothing but rubble. Although the building is falling, it was one of many that — through narrow piers, wide windows, pronounced height and embrace of the metal frame — proclaimed to Chicago and the world that a new soaring architectural form was being born in America. That legacy remains vibrant, even as the Wirt Dexter building dies a senseless death.

Categories
Demolition Historic Preservation North St. Louis The Ville

Sarah and Cottage

by Michael R. Allen

Been to the corner of Sarah and Cottage avenues in the Ville neighborhood of St. Louis before last week? If not, you have forever missed your chance to experience the intersection with the anchor of its southeast corner, a row of flats with a corner storefront. The row was typical of those built west of Grand during the early years of the twentieth century: two stories tall, walls of buff brick, Classical Revival in style and with pale terra cotta ornament, window sills and coping. This one was flat-roofed, like this row nearby on Martin Luther King Boulevard documented on Urban Review awhile ago during its demolition.

Alas, this row began falling last week and will be gone by Monday. Already, only the storefront end still stands; the rest of the row is only a pile of rubble falling into the pits of coursed rubble limestone foundations. When it’s all gone, this intersection will be a blank slate that likely will stay blank for awhile.